Amid #MeToo and Time's Up, Doritos Announces New, More Ladylike Chip

At this point in history when women en masse are standing up and fighting back against the very real threat sexual harassment and abuse, marching in the streets at the Women’s March, and running for elected office in record numbers, Doritos announced its contribution to women’s causes— a new, more ladylike Dorito chip.

Women who’ve been craving a smaller chip that makes less of a crunching sound and creates fewer crumbs and not as much of a desire to finger-lick after consuming will have their needs met with the “lady-friendly” chip, Doritos’ parent company PepsiCo announced on Freakanomics radio.

Men "lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don't want to lose that taste of the flavor, and the broken chips in the bottom,” Pepsi’s chief executive officer, Indra Nooyi, explained of the freedom men have been allowed to be less couth than women out in the world.

"Women would love to do the same, but they don't," Nooyi said, according to NPR. "They don't like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don't lick their fingers generously, and they don't like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth."

Like other pointlessly women-specific products that have come before, like the Bic for Her, which was a line of pink or purple pens that boasted a narrower barrel than regular pens in order to accommodate women’s diminutive fingers, the “lady-friendly” Doritos will come in smaller triangular shapes for women. Although whether or not the smaller shape is to accommodate what Doritos must perceive as women's tiny hands or miniature mouths (or both) is not clear. But beyond the size of the chip, the packaging will also be smaller in order to fit more snugly in a purse, according to U.K. newspaper The Sun.

The idea for gender-specific Doritos arrives at a time when women across industries are fighting for respect and equal pay, and so, like Ellen DeGeneres skewering the Bic for Her on her show when that tone-deaf product dropped six years ago, the “lady-friendly” chip has been dragged mercilessly and hilariously on social media.

Here are a few tweets that hilariously nail the sexism inherent in developing a chip designed expressly to support stereotypes about women.